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______ It was sundown as her teammates were heading back from a peaceful patrol. They were chatting boisterously about the occurrences of that day, not caring who heard them. This was clan territory, after all, and no outsider with an ounce of sense would dare tread claw upon it. “Did you hear? There’s a rumor one of our rivals declared war on us,” a nervous Fae whispered, with all the air of a juicy secret. “I doubt it. Every clan around for miles knows not to attack us. We’re untouchable,” a Guardian boasted.
A chorus of assents echoed throughout the tiny group.
The next moment, the air exploded.
She growled deep in her throat and raised her cleaver high above her head. “For glory!” sixteen voices shouted as they rushed to defend themselves.
Carnage herself quickly located her shield-partner, whose job it was to protect vulnerable areas like her belly from being stabbed. Her cleaver met an enemy’s dagger, effectively blocking it. The song of metal on metal was the only song she knew, and it was an awe inspiring hymn, a celebration, of the power of war.
Her heartbeat quickened, and she whirled through the group of opponents that had been gathered around her. Each fell quickly and efficiently, like wheat stalks before a scythe. Her teeth were bared in a feral grimace as her eyes darted around for her shield-partner.
There was no time to look more carefully, however, as a ring of new opponents began to close in on her. No help for it: without her shield-partner, she would just have to be more careful than usual. Carnage took a deep breath and charged the nearest opponent.
The battle wore on, and as she stabbed another enemy, she allowed herself to peek at the rest of the warriors. To her great surprise, the battlefield was filled with enemy dragons, milling about aimlessly.
There was no sign of her comrades.
Her guard faltered.
A crystalline slice of pain cut into her stomach.
She automatically looked down to see what had happened. Another enemy took this opportunity and stabbed her in the shoulder.
A scream was, at last, torn from her after another cut her thigh with a sword.
Thankfully, Carnage was in a trance. Not for the first time, she thought, Sword, dagger, axe, they all feel the same after you’ve been slashed a couple of times. All pain was eliminated from her mind as warmth surrounded her. She didn’t realize that the warmth was blood and that her fugue had been brought about by blood loss.
Inside her cocoon she felt safe, and so she pressed on, oblivious to the slashes that marked her scales like wide, gaping mouths. Someone knocked her cleaver from her claws. Carnage flared her wings outward, momentarily knocking her opponents away with the wind produced by her movement. She fell to her knees and began to scrabble through the earth.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a glint of rusted steel. “It’s got to be it,” she mumbled to herself as she crawled over, her belly scraping the ground. Hopefully, in the heat of battle, nobody had noticed her, because right now, she was defenseless.
When she reached her cleaver, it was grasped firmly in a dead dragon’s claws. As she tried to pry it from her grip, the breath flew from Carnage’s lungs.
Her shield-partner.
As she wheeled about, her cleaver again in its rightful place, her keening tore effortlessly through the air. She ran past so many of her dead friends that their faces began to blur together. Six, ten, thirteen...fifteen.
Carnage was the only one still alive.
She ducked, spun, and hacked, a dervish of death channeling her sorrow into her attacks. There were too many for one dragon to overcome, but still she fought. The desperation of a wounded animal was evident in her movements.
As Carnage lost more blood, her limbs began to feel as if they were encased in molasses. It was a struggle to even keep a grip on her cleaver. She felt her legs give way beneath her, and she crashed to the ground.
A diminutive Fae with an arrogant countenance strutted up to her and began to chant over her body. He looked enormous from her low vantage point. Carnage braced herself. Would she be disemboweled, inch by inch of agonizing pain? Or would she perish of something even more gruesome?
Her imagination ran wild, with vivid illustrations dashing across her mind.
His words began to slow and halt. “No power on Sornieth may remove, the curse I place on thee, to remain frozen in time.”
Nothing happened, and despite her terror, Carnage managed to assume an air of false bravado. “Ha! It didn’t do anything.” she taunted.
He smirked and allowed one of the warriors to help her up. “Run, run, little warrior, back to your clan. Run, run, bring them your news,” he crooned.
Carnage wasted no time in doing so, and as soon as she reported to the clan leader, she was swept up in a hubbub of activity to prepare for the next attack. There was no chance to go to the healers to see what could be done about the numerous wounds she had suffered.
Oddly enough, they didn’t seem to be healing, either. The words of the Fae haunted her. “To remain frozen in time.” It wasn’t until the second day that it dawned on her.
Could this be part of the curse?
She could barely lift her cleaver anymore, but Carnage persevered out of sheer stubbornness. She had been training one day when she staggered and dropped her cleaver. It made a dull thud as it embedded itself in the soil.
Had her breath always been so loud? She could scarcely hear anything what with the noise.
A scrim of red was draped over everything, and before her eyes it metamorphosed into a veil of black. Beads of sweat rolled down her scales, uncomfortably warm. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she keeled over in a dead faint.
“We can’t have one of our best warriors wounded. Heal her at all costs.”
“Sir, I am afraid that her wounds are infected. Carnage won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, not if they stay open.”
The healers’ predictions proved correct. Carnage was confined to bedrest for the next three months. At first, the entire clan was lined up to see her, but as the weeks and days passed, the line dwindled and dwindled until just her leader came.
Eventually just the wind was left to whistle through the tent, alone, alone.
Her cleaver lay in disuse on the nightstand, a reminder of what once had been. After a month of pitying looks and venomous whispers, Carnage determined to leave her clan for good.
The dragons of the Scarred Wasteland prize survival above all, and in her current condition, she would merely be dragging them down.
In quick succession, she rejected the Viridian Labyrinth, the Shifting Expanse, the Starfall Isles, Dragonhome, the Tangled Wood, the Sunbeam Ruins, the Ashfall Waste, and the Windswept Plateau.
The Sea of a Thousand Currents might be nice, what with all the water to cleanse her wounds.
But it was the Southern Icefields that truly captured her attention. The dragons living in such a desolate, lonely area would not pay close attention to one who slipped through their borders.
She journeyed alone, cutting a stark black silhouette against the land. When she reached the Starfall Isles, Carnage had not changed her bandages for weeks, perhaps out of sheer stubbornness or out of forgetfulness. To no great surprise, her wounds became infected again.
Pus became a frequent visitor in the mornings when she pulled back her bandages to check her injuries. Her muscles were an unnatural, horrid red and the stench was nearly unbearable. Each day the infection progressed, and Carnage was halfway through the Isles when her legs gave way beneath her.
No. No, not again. I won’t be helpless again.
Try as she might, eventually even her warrior’s instincts had to admit defeat. She gave a small cry and clutched her head. The memories of that fateful battle repeated over and over again, a tsunami of devastation.
Death and destruction and for the first time...she was powerless.
The clan that took her in was welcoming enough by Ice standards. They accepted her without a word, and for that she was grateful..
Still, a thought took root in her mind, dark and resentful. Couldn’t they stop hovering around her for just one day? One short day, to plot and plan and grieve.
But on the other hand, she knew that in order to survive, she had to depend on her new clan.
The Southern Icefields are not kind to cripples.
Nowhere in Sornieth is, really.
Once upon a time, so far away it could well be a different life, Carnage had everything.
But now? Now, she has nothing.
Lore credit to ladylilitu
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